Latest news with #Spokanites
Yahoo
16-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Publishers react to Spokesman-Review's nonprofit course -- served with beer -- at News Industry Mega Conference
Apr. 16—ORLANDO, Fla. — Newspaper executives took some of the first sips of an exclusive beer brewed by No-Li Brewhouse in partnership with The Spokesman-Review, an early case served at the News Industry Mega-Conference on Tuesday. Attendees drank the hazy IPA, named 1AB after the First Amendment, as they listened to a behind-the-curtain look at Northwest Passages book club events from Spokesman-Review Executive Editor Rob Curley. For the past six years, the live interviews have served as a vehicle to bring Spokanites together in consideration and conversation while also giving them a tangible relationship with their local newspaper, Curley told his day-drinking audience. Spokesman-Review staff are often at Northwest Passages events in their various capacities: covering the event, watching it on their own time, or interviewing the featured guest. It's good to have attendees see the people behind the bylines they read, Curley said. "The interviewer is one of either our reporters, editors or columnists, because we want the people who come to the events to see an act of journalism happen in front of them," Curley said. It's that relationship, fostered in part through Northwest Passages, that America's Newspapers CEO Dean Ridings said other publications could learn from and implement in their own communities. Ridings is working with Curley to create a "playbook" to make this happen. It's good for business and for people, he said. "The way that you engage with the community is fundamentally the most important thing that you're doing," Ridings said. "Whether a newspaper is for profit, not for profit, a hybrid or completely setting the model like you are doing now, you've got to have engagement. You've got to listen to your community. You've got to respond to your community. And I feel like you all are doing it off the charts." Though now exclusive to Spokane, Northwest Passages events are "hitting the road" and may soon be in other states. Leonard Woolsey, publisher for the Galveston County Daily News in Texas, thinks the event would fit right at home on his island community after he attended a Northwest Passages in Spokane featuring author and rancher Craig Johnson. "I stood up and turned around and looked backward, and what I saw were hundreds of people who shared a love for community and literature, and they were our readers; they were our people," Woolsey said. "It was like, 'This is a thread that pulls people together.' " Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
02-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
In Spokane, 97-year-old Holocaust survivor Helga Melmed remembers Auschwitz
Apr. 1—When her number was called, a teenaged Helga Melmed's head was shaved and stripped naked before the Auschwitz guards. "We were taken to the showers, and we were certain that was the end of us — that we would die in those showers. We hugged each other, and we prayed, and we sang, and we prayed as we walked into the shower. But the shower was not gas. The shower was water," she said. The 97-year-old shared her story to hundreds of Spokanites Tuesday night. The Chabad of Spokane brought the survivor to the city to "challenge" those who "deny or distort history," said Rabbi Yisroel Hahn. Melmed started school in 1934 after Adolf Hitler was already in power. The 5-year-old Berlin student was beat until she bled by her teacher. The other students were told to call her "dirty Jew." Her parents eventually pulled her out of public school. Her Jewish school was burned down in 1938 during Kristallnacht — the infamous Night of Broken Glass where Jewish homes and businesses were torched by the Nazis. "It was a horrible sight. They were screaming and they were destroying all the stores. And Jewish life changed completely. But life went on," she said. In 1941, German soldiers kidnapped Melmed and her parents. They were among thousands of Jews shoved into cattle cars that night and taken to a ghetto in Poland. There, her father was shot by German soldiers and her mother starved to death. "My mother was getting sicker and sicker, and she would not eat. What was she doing? Was she giving her life for me? I think she was, and I still feel guilty about it," she said. On her 14th birthday, Melmed was given an onion by her mother as a present. Her mother was dead by the next morning. "It was the best birthday present I ever had in all my life," she said. With both her parentsdead, Melmed was taken to the Auschwitz camp, where she waited to die herself. "The stable we were put in was very close to the gas chamber, and we would see the smoke go up out of the chimney. First white, then black. It was also the smell of burning flesh that you can never forget. We smelled it, and we remember it very, very well," she said. When your number was called, you would be taken to the gas chamber. But Melmed was instead taken to a work camp in Hamburg. She only stayed in Auschwitz for two weeks. At the end of the war, she was taken to a Swedish hospital where she stayed for the next year-and-a-half. She was 17 and weighed 46 pounds. She later immigrated to America to be with other surviving family and became a nurse. "I hope that people not only hear my story, that they also listen to it and find the words between the lines. I want you to learn. I want you to learn a lot. Get educated, find out for yourselves of what is going on and what to do. Speak out when you know right from wrong. Because only with love and only with respect can you make a better world for all of us and for the next generations and the generations to come. We need a better world. So please listen to what's going on and love and hope for a better world," she told the audience. Rabbi Hahn said Melmed's story is more important than ever given rising antisemitism since the Oct. 7, 2023, attack in Israel that was "taken right from the Nazi playbook." "Back then, we were decimated. We didn't have an army, we didn't have an air force, we didn't have power to back up that pledge. Today, we do have that power, and it's not only our right to protect our families, it is our moral obligation," he said. "The Greeks, the Romans, the Crusades, the Cossacks, the Nazis, the Bolsheviks, the names, spaces and places may change from century to century. But that insidious agenda has always been the same, to persecute and, if possible, annihilate the Jewish people. But it is God that has the final say."
Yahoo
16-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Spokane Symphony concertmaster composes violin solo for astronaut Anne McClain as she launches somewhere 'Over the Rainbow'
Mar. 15—Spokane astronaut Anne McClain has a theme song to listen to as she returns to space. When Spokane Symphony's lead violinist and concertmaster Mateusz Wolski heard that McClain was part of NASA's Crew-10 mission to the International Space Station, he was inspired to compose a song for the moment. "I just felt compelled to create something nice for her and knowing how much the Spokanites here appreciate her," said Wolski, the symphony concertmaster. "It just came over me." He recently watched the film "Wicked," so he was thinking about "The Wizard of Oz." Stuck in his head was the theme "Over the Rainbow" — a song about hopes, dreams and, in a way, coming home. He adapted the melody into an original composition evoking the cosmos. After a few hours of practice last weekend, he recorded it on his iPhone from his music stand and texted it to McClain, wishing her the best on her travel. He didn't expect it to be publicized, but McClain loved it so much she shared it. She also sent it to herself so she can listen to it aboard the ISS, he said. "It feels completely surreal from my perspective," Wolski said. "All I was trying to do was — a person like her with all the stress happening in the world could use something uplifting and beautiful." Wolski plans to record a higher-quality version after NASA asked to share it. He also plans to perform it as an encore at the symphony's Masterworks concerts March 29-30 at Martin Woldson Theater at The Fox. Wolski met McClain a little more than five years ago when she was a special guest for the symphony at a concert celebrating the 50th anniversary of the moon landing. Wolski asked her lots of questions about space travel, and the two kept in touch. The short tribute is about 21/2 minutes long, but it's much more than a simple cover. "When you hear the theme, you know what the song is, but the way I set it up to create a mood, you don't know what will happen next," Wolski said. To capture the sense of large distance in space travel, Wolski uses a combination of very high and very low registers on the violin, oscillating back and forth. It's a difficult maneuver, Wolski said, but it has the effect of sounding like two violins playing at the same time. Ultimately, the piece is a fusion of Wolski's lifelong fascination with art and science. "It's a natural bridge between exploration of what is out there and at the same time looking inward and being connected." James Hanlon's reporting for The Spokesman-Review is funded in part by Report for America and by members of the Spokane community. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
Yahoo
12-03-2025
- Science
- Yahoo
You know Anne McClain. Now meet the rest of the astronauts from Crew-10
Mar. 11—Editor's note: Spokesman-Review reporter Nick Gibson is in Florida this week to report on Anne McClain's and NASA's SpaceX launch from the Kennedy Space Center. Follow along in print and online at CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — There's an old adage that says if you want to go fast, you go alone. But, if you want to go far, you go together. It's a sentiment that NASA Astronaut Anne McClain, 45, believes in wholeheartedly. The 1997 Gonzaga Prep grad has repeated the phrase frequently in her interviews, speeches and social media posts over the years. While Spokanites admire and embrace their Lilac City hero, they're likely less familiar with McClain's companions for her trip to the stars. Rounding out the rest of Crew-10 are NASA astronaut Nichole Ayers, Roscosmos cosmonaut Kirill Peskov and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency astronaut Takuya Onishi. Crew-10 is the 10th SpaceX mission to the ISS. Crew-10's takeoff aboard a SpaceX Dragon capsule and Falcon 9 rocket is scheduled for Wednesday, at 4:48 p.m. Pacific Time, and will be livestreamed on the free streaming service, NASA+. To McClain's point, traveling a great distance might be easier with four trained pilots on the team. "Anne and I are both military pilots, but then Tak and Kirill are commercial pilots for their respective countries," Ayers said in a pre-launch interview on NASA's Houston We Have a Podcast. "And it's, I think, enhanced our ability to work together as a team." In a press conference Friday, Ayers said the Crew-10 patch and mission symbol pays homage to their backgrounds, depicting a large dragon with its open wings encircling the globe and its eye trained on the ISS. Large gold entry and entry trails cross below, forming the Roman numeral X. The 10-sided patch is peppered with red, white and blue stars, an homage to the flags of the countries they hail from. Ayers said the crew started with some AI prompts and generated images, before sitting down with a living artist to flesh out the final design. "There's all sorts of meaning in the patch," Ayers said. "So it was just kind of a booster for the brainstorm, which then kick-started our discussion as a crew on what we wanted in the patch." Nichole "Vapor" Ayers, mission pilot Ayers' callsign stems from the trail the Air Force Major would leave behind as one of few women to pilot an F-22 Raptor, according to NASA. Born in San Diego but raised at the foot of the Rocky Mountains in Divide, Colorado, Ayers, 36, credits growing up next to the Air Force Academy for instilling a desire to fly. She always had an interest in space and would follow shuttle launches. She said her heart was set on being the astronaut behind the wheel of a shuttle as soon as she learned it was a possibility. "One of my favorite parts about growing up in Colorado is the exploring, and the ability to go hiking and camping and kind of figuring out how to live in austere places, which has turned out to be a great analog for what we're training to do here," she said. Ayers, who has a twin sister, graduated with academic honors from the Air Force Academy in 2011 with a bachelor's degree in mathematics, before going on to earn a master's degree in computational and applied mathematics from Rice University in Houston. Like McClain, she's a service member and former collegiate athlete, receiving Mountain West Conference Academic All-Conference honors all four years she competed on the Thunderbirds' volleyball team. "As a F-22 pilot, we were kind of on the operational tip of the spear in the military," Ayers said. "And now we get to go do things that are on the operational tip of the spear for humanity, and go out into the vacuum of space in a space suit that is basically like a small spacecraft." Selected as an astronaut in December 2021, Ayers will be the first graduate of her astronaut class to serve on a mission. In her podcast interview, she said she's excited to participate in research that touches on her computational fluid dynamics background, including combustion studies and some on irrigation and plant growth, like one headed by a Washington State University professor exploring alfalfa growth. Like many of those who came before her, she also looks forward to seeing how her perspective changes with the view of the globe from the ISS. "I'm excited to share the experience with this team, but also to see the team that we are on the ground," Ayers said. "You know, there are no borders. You can't see borders from the space station, so I'm excited to see how all of us individuals form into one world while we're up there." Kirill Peskov, mission specialist The Crew-10 mission will also be Peskov's first spaceflight, after being selected as a cosmonaut in 2017. The Russian pilot came to Roscosmos as a commercial pilot, flying Boeing — 757's and 767's. He credits that career path to his parents; his mother was a meteorologist and his father was a pilot while growing up in Kyzyl, Russia, a Siberian town about half the size of Spokane. Peskov, 34, said he's greatly enjoyed getting to know the rest of Crew-10, and that their shared backgrounds helped them find their groove . "It helps us a lot to make our communication nice and smooth inside the cabin during nominal and off-nominal procedures during training," Peskov said. While soft spoken in most American media interviews, Peskov shared a fair amount with the space agency's media team. He made a point to credit his family for helping him get to where he is. He's always been curious about the world around him, and his parents and grandparents encouraged him to keep his inquisitive nature well into adulthood. "My parents and grandparents inspired me," Peskov told NASA podcast host Joseph Zakrzewski. "They didn't want me to become a cosmonaut, they just helped to satisfy my curiosity around this world, and they didn't kill it when I was little. I think in some aspects, I still stay like a child, and that's what helps to go along on this way." Peskov plans to take a toy turtle with him on the voyage, so he can snap a photo of the curve of the Earth aligning with the shell, to disprove a friend back home who adamantly believes the world is flat, he said. "I want to ... send this picture to him, and then bring this turtle with this picture," Peskov said. "So it's some kind of like, trolling, or whatever. And also, I think it will be a nice present." While he's not sure how the experience might impact him on a personal level, he's sure he will walk away with takeaways for future missions. He hopes to wind up working alongside McClain, Ayers and Onishi again one day. "I think this is the basic thing that makes us humans, this curiosity and the hunger for exploration," Peskov said. Takuya Onishi, mission specialist Onishi and McClain are the seasoned space travelers of the bunch, and while they've done their best to impart wisdom on their teammates, Onishi said a lot has changed in the nearly 9 years he was last aboard the International Space Station on Expedition 48 and 49. (Wednesday's launch start the beginning of Expedition 73.) "I'm sure there will be a lot of progress in our operational systems, as well as our research," Onishi said. Prior experience also means he knows what to come prepared with, as he shared in a press conference Friday. "I found that food is really important to relieve our stress and also make our team bonded together more strongly," Onishi said. "So I'm bringing some Japanese food to be able to share with my crew members, and also so that I can get some joy or relief from my routine work onboard the station." Onishi, 49, grew up in Nerima, a ward of Tokyo, and holds a bachelor's degree in aeronautics and astronautics from the University of Tokyo. He spent years flying Boeing 767s as a commercial pilot before being selected as an astronaut candidate in 2009. He holds the unique distinction of being a certified flight director for the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in addition to an astronaut, which he said has provided him with an intimate understanding of both sides of ISS operations. Onishi is also a "cavenaut" and "aquanaut." The former title comes from participating in training with the European Space Agency, while the latter stems from a six-day stay at the only underwater research lab, Aquarius. Located 6-stories below the surface in the Florida Keys, Onishi and his crew visited in 2011 to test different ways to explore an asteroid, but their time below the water was cut short by Hurricane Rina. McClain will pass the title of commander over to Onishi once aboard the station, something he said he takes great pride in and responsibility for. "I have already built a strong trust and also confidence in my crewmates, because they are so capable, and we are all pilots," Onishi said. He added that the team is used to quickly responding to "emerging situations." "Even if the situation then deviates from our standard procedures, I already saw a couple of times that each crew member responded to that new situation, kind of swapping their roles independently," Onishi said. "So I'm super confident in my crewmates." McClain said what really stayed with her from her last stay aboard the station was the "the level of technical proficiency that you have to operate in every single day, but at the same time, how much you rely on your crew members." She said as soon as the crew was named, she reflected on the lifelong bonds she made with her previous ISS teammates. "They're my brothers and sisters," McClain said. "I still get a huge smile on my face every time I see them in the hallway, and I realize these are the people that I'm going to build that same relationship with while we all get to, one, live out a dream, and two, we get to be the operators on this amazing equipment, both flying up there on a SpaceX Dragon and being part of the space station crew. "I'm just really humbled by the magnitude of the experience."
Yahoo
17-02-2025
- Climate
- Yahoo
Atypically snowy February to continue into the week
Feb. 16—A near constant dumping of snow fell during the daylight hours Sunday, foreshadowing the white week ahead. Snowfall from Sunday into Monday morning could accumulate an additional 1 to 3 inches, the National Weather Service forecast, on top of the thick layer of white already blanketing the city. Monday evening could bring another 1/2 -inch accumulation, as could Tuesday night. Daytime Tuesday appears cloudy with no snow forecast. Then, on Wednesday, a new system is expected to roll in, with another 1 to 3 inches possible through Thursday. Meteorologist Ken Daniel hazards this could change as the system moves in. The Columbia Basin should see less snow, mountainous areas more. The distribution of snowfall this year is abnormal, with fewer inches of snow in the earlier winter months that may have lulled Spokanites into a false sense of security. The typical snowfall normal for November in Spokane is 6.2 inches; 2024 accumulated 2.6 in that month, measured by the service at Spokane International Airport. December continued this pattern, accumulating 4.1 inches in 2024, a far cry from the normal of 13.8 inches. January brought 6.3 inches, the normal is 12.3. February appears to be making up for lost time, accumulating 12.3 inches as of Sunday evening, compared to the average of 4.4 inches accumulated by Feb. 15. This winter has garnered 23.3 inches, excluding Sunday's snowfall. Typically, Spokane sees an average of 37.3 inches by this time of year. For those waiting for the sun and warmth to return, the end is in sight. The historic average first day to reach 75 degrees is April 30. Elena Perry's work is funded in part by members of the Spokane community via the Community Journalism and Civic Engagement Fund. This story can be republished by other organizations for free under a Creative Commons license. For more information on this, please contact our newspaper's managing editor.
